Perfect homemade cakes for every occasion

My most recent cake for an important birthday was for James’ dad Michael’s 60th, which fell on a Sunday this year. The Saturday before, he held a big party for loads of friends & family, & had The Counterfeit Beatles provide the night’s entertainment. Michael is a huge Beatles fan, & a huge music fan in general, so it was obvious his cake should be along this theme…. As Michael owns 6 guitars I decided a guitar cake would just be ideal for him ☺️ Inspired by a picture I saw on Pinterest, I planned to bake a total of 8 sponges to make the body of the guitar on two tiers. I then decided I would have to ganache them to get nice straight edges, which I knew would take me ages!! So I set aside a whole day to make my ganache in the morning, allowing a few hours for it to thicken up at room temp, and then to fill the cakes and cover them (as well as lots of my kitchen – ganaching is such a messy job!!! 😂). I managed to create two lovely straight-sided cakes ready to cover with fondant, but then the problems began!!! I found it really difficult covering the cakes – I’m not sure if it’s because they were taller than usual, or perhaps the ganache was too cold when I tried to put on the fondant, or if I overworked the fondant kneading the colour paste into it, but either way I did a pretty bad job!! 😟 Thankfully I could use the classic trick of making the ‘ugly’ side of the cake the back, & kept this side against the wall so no body would see it!! 😜 But, I definitely need some more practice at this.

The ‘cake’ part complete – and ready for the shortbread guitar neck

So, the next step was the head & neck of the guitar, which I really wanted to be edible, so the whole thing could be consumed 😁 Luckily I had a friend come up with the solution as I was telling her about my plans….! Louise suggested shortbread would be good for this, as it would be quite strong. I had never made shortbread before, but after googling the recipe I thought it looked easy and was the ideal solution 😀 I covered it in melted chocolate too, which created an ideal colour, but I thought might also help strengthen it a bit.

The shortbread neck, with fondant decoration

I spent quite a while doing all the decoration, including attaching individual fondant ‘strings’, which I then painted with edible silver paint. I was so pleased with the end result, but also pretty nervous it might not survive the journey to the party!

The finished guitar cake

I’m glad to report that it did survive, & it went down really well! Michael was really pleased, and lots of the guests told me how much they enjoyed eating it 😄